Financial topics

[OLD1953]

My father was a Great Depression survivor, he was a foreman at the Evansville shipyard during the war. He died not that long ago, with severe Alzheimer's. Being far out in the country, he didn't feel the Depression as much as it was felt in the cities, but it was certainly bad enough. There was a great deal of lawlessness with moonshiners and a lot of illegal activity going on. He said he about died when he was visiting a moonshiners daughter, and a deputy sheriff walked in as big as you please. He figured they'd run him in with the family but he was just stopping by for his weekly bribe and a free jug.

[aedens]

That's beginning to become known as the "new" reality. If the pure consumerism of "buy any crap with a label" is really dead, then the notion of "the consumer will spend if ----" is also dead. When THAT percolates into the market fund of general knowledge, then we'll slide down to true market value for a great many consumer related stocks.

The little things go first. Starbucks and all the other retail outlets that assumed the consumer would buy luxury goods are slamming up and down like rockets on every rumor of recovery/recession. Apparently they have no value besides potential sales.

A few of us have seen it also in our locality very early. As I mentioned "the point is the house got in that condition one day at a time."
More conversations I have had with some are leading to this effect we conveyed as wasting. The exhaustion effect of gradualism
many will wish to spin it to a soft patch or whatever rhetoric they throw out. West of us a heated debate is ongoing that
they do not want another big box grocery in the area. I can check the area demographics but the point is the Town people knows it will
be wiped out. The saturation effect of marketing should be obvious. The other side of the coin is America has more people
so why does the growth models have to stop. More with less does not bode well. As we have noted nobody cares much
for the "buy local" mentality. In their minds, in this economy, it's more important to "buy cheap."
It goes without saying what the zoning board wants to consolidate the tax base revenue streams.
Quick check indicates Total housing units 36,757 for the county
Current: 0.13 / 10,000 pop.
State: 0.18 / 10,000 pop. Population Ratio to Super store
County - 12.8 percent, down from 13.4 percent, down from 15.4 percent yoy employment rate
I have alot of people in the said County in question I know. Slowly it is moving forward.
It would be safe to only a few percent on the employment scenario IMO.

[Trevor]

My grandparents were lucky enough to live in a small area during the Depression. From what I read of it, it was worse in urban areas than it was in small towns because the latter could always grow food, even if they had very little cash. I heard other stories about friends being homeless and how difficult it was just to survive. Now our population is far more urbanized, meaning that it could very well be worse.

I'll likely be telling these stories to my kids, assuming I live.

[Higgenbotham]

The wallpaper analogy is a good one. The veneer is very thin indeed with regard to the stock market. Never have I seen what appears to me to be a more deceptive market. By all outward appearances, the market averages look robust - the market itself is anything but. This could be a walk in the park compared to July 2011.

Everybody who reads this forum regularly knows I am short up to my eyeballs and under pressure while the market keeps moving higher. I've been keeping my mouth shut because not much has changed in the past two weeks from outward appearances. Meanwhile, the condition of the market, the average stock, continues to deteriorate markedly. I've never seen anything like it. The market looked bad before the flash crash, but this looks even worse. This market could crash any time in the blink of an eye, almost literally. But there's no way to predict either the immediate time frame in which it might occur or whether it will happen within the near future at all. I'd like to say it can't be hours to a day away, but how do I know for sure when things are so out of kilter?

Here's just one example from a freebie site. This doesn't happen from near the top of a market with the S&P down just 20 points in a given day.

http://unicorn.us.com/advdec/2012/adU20120306.txt

Two days before the flash crash with the S&P down more from the high and down more on the day:

http://unicorn.us.com/advdec/2010/adU20100504.txt

Do you own due diligence if need be - this is not financial advice.

[OLD1953]

You would think the value of Starbucks stock would be tied to the market in coffee beans, in an inverse fashion. You'd be dead wrong, too, at least since 2007.

I see the new Yahoo! CEO has decided to cut his way to profits. Has that ever worked for a software company? I could make a long list of the companies where it failed miserably.

[aedens]

http://www.gold.org/government_affairs/ ... _standard/

Foot prints.

[OLD1953]

I cannot believe this popped up the day after that post about the sheriff and the moonshiner. Life is strange.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/all ... -1.1034436

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/man ... -1.1033622

Five year investigation? What?

The bad thing about fiat money is that inflation represents an invisible tax on the people that is very easy for politicians to support. Also, allowing bankers to be the controllers of money works only as long as you have bankers with self control.

But gold money is debased as easily as paper, it just makes Gresham's Law a bit more obvious in application. After all, it's quite notable that the "new currency" was actually debt which was actually OLD money, IOW money that was worth more at the present than it would be in the future. In that light, borrowing to the pits in times of inflation is not a surprise, the problem lies in figuring out when inflation is over, and borrowing is contraindicated.

[aedens]

Growing debt is a hidden effect of austerity and will keep hitting.
But the fact remains that our current problem is, in effect, a problem of excess worldwide savings, looking for someplace to go.
New York Times Articles from separate articles above.
Stealth Taxes are more damaging than we wish to consider given the PPI over the last few decades. http://www.bls.gov/ppi/#data
If you save your a xxx
If you do not save your a xxx
Only a few admit the proxy conflicts to control burns since inflation is a blunt mechanism.

[OLD1953]

Growing debt is a hidden effect of austerity and will keep hitting.
But the fact remains that our current problem is, in effect, a problem of excess worldwide savings, looking for someplace to go.
New York Times Articles in two separate articles.
Stealth Taxes are more damaging than we wish to consider given the PPI over the last few decades. http://www.bls.gov/ppi/#data
If you save your a xxx
If you do not save your a xxx
Only a few admit the proxy conflicts to control burns since inflation is a blunt mechanism.

How does debt become savings? What kind of book keeping are they using here? I mean, yes, I'd like something to put money into that paid a reasonable return over inflation, without ridiculous levels of risk, but there is no such investment today. I don't consider my gems an investment, I just like them and they are cheap right now. Given the experience at MFGlobal, we can't say commodity plays have a reasonable level of risk, the CME is simply not making good on their guarantee or contracts, so that's just the end of that. Bonds? Who do you trust? Gold/silver are overbought and have been dropping. I suppose physical delivery of a few tons of copper or nickel would be possible, but that's all a bit difficult to sell. (And nobody at ALL wants to discuss the effective seginorage on coins, which, excuse me, is damned high. 4% seems to be the low end average, 8% and up on the high end of that spread, and I'm damned if I'll pay anyone that much of a spread in an overbought market. I'm the kind of guy who gets ticked over mutual fund charges, yes.) So just what is this "safe" investment these jokers are claiming is out there? And I'm sure the answer is stocks.

[aedens]

So just what is this "safe" investment these jokers are claiming is out there? And I'm sure the answer is stocks.
Cui bono - not us. Vanilla scalpers just move closer to the host.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... /2092.html
http://www.dailycollateral.com/2012/03/ ... -bailouts/

Consumers are wasting since the proxy currency wars will run it course. Of course it is for our own benefit they will assert.
Growing debt is a hidden effect of austerity and will keep hitting. This group of taxpayer will never stabilize.

But the fact remains that our current problem is, in effect, a problem of excess worldwide savings, looking for someplace to go.
The balance sheet depression is a question of Political Economy even more. SWF are just being admitted that is all. As we asserted ever so long ago there has not been a free market even before our birth. Only a few admit the proxy conflicts to control burns since inflation is a blunt mechanism. My point is charts are pointless and have been. If either side assumes election mattered for a hundred years they are utterly insane IMO. Ceteris Paribus
We only deal with three kinds of people every day and GD just cuts the clutter out.
What is being conveyed has already argued that the changes introduced by way of groupings which
made for cartellisation on the one hand and a greatly increased rigidity of the labour market on the other,
were such as to produce an important and far-reaching impairment of what degree of flexibility there was
and is to be more pronounced. Warned also as the Austrian School who has never succumbed to the fatal illusion that values can be measured, and has never misunderstood that statistical data has nothing to do with economic theory, but belongs to the history of economics alone. Truth will prevail of its own accord when man possess the faculties necessary to perceive it. Using impertinent means to cause people to pay lip service to a teaching was of no use if they lacked the ability to grasp its substance and significance and I have been under thought to adhere to its lesson.

AIJ Investment Advisors Co. used clients' corporate pension money to conduct futures trading in Japan, after first transferring the money to the Cayman Islands and Hong Kong, sources said. The details offer clues on how the suspended asset manager allegedly burned through most of what is now believed to be ¥210 billion entrusted to it by 84 employee pension funds covering more than 880,000 people as of the end of 2011.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... _messenger
What Russia taught Syria: When you destroy a city, make sure no one -- not even the story -- gets out alive.

We have numerous forum posting on our observations to this topical note. In any "generation" to have capital in anothers hands.